Servants of the goddess: Female religious agency in archaic and fifth-century Greek epigrams and dedications

Résumé

The roots of classical Greek public honorary display, often apparently secular in tone, can be found in much older forms of dedicatory display with their more explicit religious emphasis. As an example, I consider women and girls in archaic and fifth-century dedicatory epigrams and monuments: whether as dedicators or as dedicators’ family members mentioned epigraphically and/or depicted iconographically, these females are often presented and praised as religious functionaries. Female dedicators stretch from Nikandra (CEG 403, Delos, ca. 650; image and text may allude to her holding a priestly office laid down when she married) to the priestess Lusistratê (CEG 317, Athens, ca. 450; apparently honorary crowns for her service to the goddesses). Sixth-century sculpted korai from the Athenian Acropolis may belong to a comparable votive tradition, if they refer to the male dedicators’ daughters’ religious service to the polis in the Panathenaia. The korai are not named in epigrams, but they are often agalmata, a word associated with the performance of public religious rites in poetry, and Athena is named with epithets evoking her as goddess of the Panathenaia.

1Women were active dedicators, especially in sanctuaries of Artemis, Aphrodite, Asklepios, Demeter and Hera.1 Surviving mirrors, figurines and plaques betray their interests in girls’ transition, marriage, childbirth, infant-welfare and weaving. Temple inventories confirm this impression of women’s votive activity: of 908 dedicators named in the lists of the Athenian Asklepieion, one study determined that 43 per cent are female, 38 per cent male.2 My broader project is focused on archaic and fifth-century inscribed dedications, especially those bearing epigrams. These tend to be display pieces, often statues or statuettes, and perhaps not surprisingly, the percentage of female dedicators is lower. Still, women are donors in about eighty texts in Professor Lazzarini’s corpus of nearly 900 private inscriptions.3

2From the fourth century, one finds increasing votive display of elite women and girls, and sometimes dedicatory practice shaded into honorary. A city votes honours to an individual, then that individual or his or her family sets up what is technically a dedication, but resembles a secular form of display, especially when a portrait statue is offered. In the case of women and girls, however, it is often their public service as priestesses or other religious functionaries that was commemorated.4 Timô’s portrait dedication provides an example (base for her lost statue, CEG 858 = SGOst 03/07/03, Erythrai,5 late IV-III BCE):

[T]imô, wife of Zôilos, priestess for the city, daughter of Pankratidês, dedicated to Dionysos this image of beauty, an example of virtue and wealth, (to be) an immortal memorial for her children and ancestors.

Nothing points to civic honours, but one notes the status claims for self and family.7 Often, we find the honorific formula “X dedicated Y”, where Y is the name of the person represented.8

9 Keesling, review of Connelly, Portrait.

3I wish to trace the archaic and early classical context out of which such practices developed. But this may be a fool’s errand. Keesling has taken Connelly to task for speculative leaps in seeking earlier precedents for what were likely fourth-century or Hellenistic inventions in the commemoration of female religious agency.9 In fact, Lusistratê’s inscription is the earliest that points to a specific religious office (pillar base, CEG 317 = IG Ι3 953 and SEG 46 [1996] 2374, Athenian Eleusinion, ca. 450):

[᾽Α]ρρήτο τελετῆς πρόπολος σῆς, πότνια Δηοῖ, |

καὶ θυγατρὸς προθύρο κόσμον ἄγαλμα τόδε |

ἔστησεν στεφάνω Λυσιστράτη οὐδὲ παρόντων |

φείδεται ἀλλὰ θεοῖς ἄφθονος ἐς δύναμιν.

Lusistratê, the servant of your rite that cannot be divulged, Mistress Dêô, and your daughter’s, placed this agalma, an ornament (κόσμος) of your front porch, two crowns; and she has not spared what was available, but (was) ungrudging toward the gods to the best of her ability.

10 Miles, Eleusinion, p. 66.

She calls herself πρόπολος of the rites of Demeter and Persephone, and the base was found near the city Eleusinion.10 Lusistratê clearly served as priestess of Demeter, an important position held for life by a member of an elite clan. She dedicated in her own name and, as the epigram emphasizes, at her own expense, and she labels her dedication an agalma and a kosmos of its location, terms to which I shall return. But what was the agalma?

11 A common dedication for entrances. See Harrison, Sculpture, p. 121-122.

4The cutting on top of the inscribed base held a pillar, often assumed to be a Herm.11 But the second word in the third line may tell a different story. Some accent στεφανώ and hypothesize that this is a title of Demeter’s priestess. I follow Hansen and others, who print στεφάνω, “two crowns”.12 If correct, Lusistratê dedicated a pair of wreaths, and the pillar held these wreathes or an image of them. If the polis crowned her for her priestly service, we have an early honorary dedication of crowns.13 Lusistratê’s successors were granted even greater privileges: two fourth-century priestesses dedicated marble portrait statues of themselves.14

5Lusistratê, though, stands alone in the fifth century until its end, and I cannot cite any archaic dedicatory inscriptions explicitly presenting women as civic religious functionaries. To be sure, women and girls were commemorated as agents or participants in religious rites. Some dedications may memorialize service in an official capacity, but the inscriptions offer only indirect evidence, to which I will return later. My first and main question here, however, concerns reception or response: What happened when sanctuary visitors read inscriptions as they viewed dedications? I argue that inscribed dedications by women, or ones representing women, could be sites at which women’s religious roles were not only commemorated, but re-performed in the actions and responses of readers and viewers.15 If I accurately reconstruct the earlier tradition out of which the dedications of Lusistratê and her successors evolved, we might posit more continuity from archaic into classical and beyond than otherwise appears – not a continuity in explicit statements of reasons for dedicating, but in responses to dedications. In what follows, I first discuss a woman’s dedication that, like Lusistratê’s, mentions no male family member. Then, I consider the more common dedications featuring women together with male relatives. Finally, I return to women as public religious functionaries.

6Let us begin with Iphidikê’s dedication from the Athenian Acropolis (Figure 1).16 A metre of fluted column survives. It was surmounted by a now lost Ionic capital, which in turn supported a marble statue, perhaps an Athena. Two inscriptions appear in separate flutes (CEG 198 = IG Ι3 683 and SEG 46 [1996] 2374, ca. 510-500):

17 Korai from the Athenian Acropolis exemplify the decoration of archaic marble statuary; even their (...)

18 See, e.g., Steiner, Images, passim.

Whatever the statue represented, it was no doubt a charming figure, elaborately patterned and colourfully painted.17 We understand the archaic aesthetic well enough to know that those features were considered beautiful and elicited pleasurable responses.18 The inscriptions do not merely convey messages consistent with such a statue; they were worded to function as performative utterances. Borrowing from performance theory, I liken these sorts of texts, read aloud while monuments were viewed, to poetic framing passages that mark a song as special communication. Reading Iphidikê’s inscriptions could successfully frame a pleasurable experience of viewing her monument.

7The dedicatory text is almost indistinguishable from prose, but it is a hexameter, and the last word is a poetic divine epithet. Πολιοῦχος could be a cult title (epiklêsis) for Athena in some cities. On the Acropolis, though, it did not refer to a specific cult, but called to mind, for poetically experienced readers, a “traditional referentiality” acquired from stories about Athena as warrior goddess.19 The epigram thus presents Iphidikê as belonging to the class of people who engaged in casual versification, among men, those who attended symposia.20

8The prose signature complements this status-claim. Iphidikê patronized a famous artist, and a foreign one, identified by his name and ethnic, and further highlighted by the Ionic lettering: four-barred sigmas, êta (corrected to Attic epsilon), psilosis (lack of consonantal êta), and in the dedication, Ionic lambda.21 Iphidikê was presented as participating in an Aegean, not just an Athenian, elite cultural milieu. Artists’ signatures can be compared to poets’ or performers’ descriptions of their skills in lyric song.22 Archermos’ signature was thus not an advertisement seeking more commissions; it presented Iphidikê as a person of discriminating taste, who spent handsomely to ornament Athena’s sanctuary. Pindarists speak of a kosmos motif; and please recall kosmos in Lusistratê’s epigram.23Signatures are a variation on this motif. If viewers responded to the statue with pleasure, then reading the signature, together with the dedicatory hexameter, successfully framed their aesthetic experience as the result of Iphidikê’s good taste and public-spirited expenditure.

9That sort of encounter with the dedication constituted a circulation of delight and consequent good feelings among viewers, the woman who commissioned the artist, and even the goddess. Such effects can be compared to those of ritual. Now, the hexameter narrates Iphidikê’s original dedicatory act. As readers represented that rite, then, they experienced something like a ritual sponsored or performed by her, one that put her status on display and attracted people’s affirming responses. In effect, reading framed the encounter as a re-performance of her act of offering.

10Iphidikê’s and Lusistratê’s inscriptions are unusual in omitting family.24 Among epigrams naming females, there is a marked tendency – as against those mentioning only males – to emphasize both family and religious activity beyond the act of dedicating. One of Telestodikê’s epigrams illustrates two ways this was accomplished, namely, by recording a joint dedication by her and a man, likely a husband or brother, and by including a prayer for the family (pillar base for ?statue [?Artemis], CEG 414 = SEG 50 [2000] 1712, Paros, ca. 500):

Δημοκύδης τόδ᾿ ἄγαλμα Τε|λεστοδίκη τ᾿ ἀπὸ κοινῶν |

εὐχσάμενοι στῆσαν παρ|θένωι Ἀρτέμιδι |

σεμνῶι ἐνὶ ζαπέδωι κό|ρηι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο, |

τῶν γενεὴν βίοτόν τ᾿ α|ὖχσ᾿ ἐν ἀπημοσύνηι.

Dêmokudês and Telestodikê, having made a vow, placed this agalma, out of their common resources, for the virgin Artemis, the daughter of aegis-bearing Zeus, in (her) holy ground. Increase their family and substance in safety.

The whole distich on Telestodikê’s other dedication is an address to Artemis and, though she is sole dedicator, she identifies herself by son and father (column for ?statue, CEG 413 = SEG 46 [1996] 2374 and 48 [1998] 2212, ?Delos, ca. 525-500):

Ἄρτεμι, σοὶ τόδ᾿ ἄγαλμα Τελεστοδί[κη μ᾿ ἀνέθηκεν] |

Ἀσφαλίο μήτηρ, Θερσέλεω θυγάτηρ.

O Artemis, for you Telestodikê, mother of Asphalios, daughter of Therseleôs, [dedicated me], this agalma.

11Sometimes, male dedicators acted on behalf of female family members, as in CEG 228. The restoration is contested, but Kunarbos seems to have dedicated for his two daughters, apparently one Athena Promachos statuette for each (base for two statuettes, Athenian Acropolis, ca. 500-480):

Ἀριστομάχεν ⁝ καὶ Ἀρχεστράτ[εν...] |

παῖδε, ⁝ φαρθένε, καὶ γενεὰν ⁝ ?hοῖν̣ [...] |

[...] ⁝ Κύναρβος ⁝ παῖς Λ̣ι̣[... ] |

O virgin (goddess), [?may you ...] Aristomachê and Archestratê (accusatives), (his) two daughters, and (his) family. Kunarbos, son of Li...?, [?dedicated these] because the two (daughters)...

The daughters’ names are objects, not of a verb of dedication, but likely of an imperative in a prayer to Athena: “save” or “increase” them. Perhaps they had made a vow which their father fulfilled.27

12When people encountered these dedications, what happened? As in Iphidikê’s case, reading inscriptions could frame viewers’ responses successfully as enactments, or re-enactments, of rituals. But here, the religious roles of women and girls as family members were perpetuated by re-performance.

28 Common in fourth-century and later votive reliefs, e.g., Kaltsas and Shapiro, Worshiping Women, p. (...)

13Unquestionably, readers of such epigrams presented women as belonging to families that identified themselves as units of a larger community through their members’ religious activities. Female family members were also presented visually in dedications.28 Plaque A from Pitsá, for example, presumably commemorated an actual family sacrifice.29 A short-haired girl – perhaps she offered locks of hair before marriage – leads a procession to an altar, pours a libation there and carries a kanoun on her head. Behind her come a small boy leading the victim, then two boys playing lyre and flute, two older girls or women carrying fillets and branches to offer and gesturing in prayer or song, and an adult male. All figures are wreathed, and each woman sports a red himation and embroidered blue peplos. Prose inscriptions include the dedication, name-labels for all three females and the painter’s signature. The Samian Heraion provides a monumental parallel from ca. 560, signed by Geneleôs. It likely portrays a family engaged in festivity: seated mother, son possibly holding a flute, three daughters as korai pulling their skirts (perhaps to suggest dancing) and reclining father (the dedicator) with drinking horn.30 Each surviving female statue has an inscribed name-label.

14Visual or verbal presentation, though, was only one side of people’s discourse with dedications. The efficacy of display depended on their responses, particularly their experience of emotional heightening. Heightening made social presentations acceptable, desirable, divinely sanctioned. The heightening was in part aesthetic: viewers delighted in images’ beauty, brilliance and complexity. But there was also religious heightening, especially before statues of gods. The qualities that made them delightful – gleam, size or elevation, youthful beauty – were consistent with Greeks’ understanding of how gods’ bodies looked. Viewers beheld something divine, if not full epiphany.31 Such heightening, aesthetic and religious, was comparable to that experienced in rituals, and poets described the two experiences, of art and ritual, in words like ἄγαλμα and χάρις that appear also in epigrams (more on that below).

15The oldest surviving dedication with an epigram naming a woman as offerant provides an illustration. It is also the earliest kore, indeed the earliest statue, both in marble and large-scale (Delos Artemision, ca. 650, Figure 2).32 Three hexameters are inscribed on the left side of the kore’s skirt (CEG 403 = SEG 48 [1998] 2212; Figure 3):

33 For the quality of this êta (which I do not transliterate as “ê”) see Jeffery, Local Scripts, p. 2 (...)

Though the epigram presents Nikandre in relation to male family members, it emphasizes her importance. As dedicator, she established reciprocity with Artemis, and the Homeric echo, “preeminent beyond others”, makes a social status claim.34 Nikandre is also the link between two families joined by her marriage, a ritual union alluded to by ἄλοχος ν̣⟨ῦν⟩, his “wife, now”.35 Phraxos appears not to have been Naxian, perhaps not Greek. Aristocratic exogamy afforded heads of households opportunities for display and enhancement of symbolic capital through the exchange of daughters.36 Here, exogamy was highlighted by placing the dedication at the regional sanctuary of Delos, while giving it a Naxian character to match Deinodikês’ ethnicity: the epigram’s lettering, the statue’s marble and the atelier detectable in its style are all Naxian.37This offering to the goddess brought to the attention of those encountering it a different act of giving, that of Nikandre in marriage to unite two houses and ethnicities.

41 They were addressed as μακάριοι, “blessed”. See Oakley and Sinos, Wedding, p. 26-30.

16The statue probably represents Artemis, an appropriate recipient of the dedication of a young woman passing from virginity to child-rearing.38 The imposing size and use of marble so early point to a divine subject, and the holes in her hands perhaps held Artemis’ bow and arrows. Also though, the figure resembles a young woman at her marriage or pre-marriage rites:39 she is dressed in elaborate, originally painted garments echoed by those on the Pitsá plaque. Can we speak, then, of an iconographic assimilation of Nikandre to Artemis?40If we can, the statue reflects maiden-songs like Alkman’s First Partheneion, in which performers, as family representatives, were assimilated to the deities they worshipped, thereby supporting a claim of individual and familial closeness to the sacred. Likewise in marriage rituals, brides and grooms were assimilated to divinities.41 The heightened effects of viewing Nikandre’s kore mimicked those of such rites. Viewers’ awe at the size, exotic material and imported artistry of the image of Artemis – but also of Nikandre – and their pleasure in its beauty re-enacted the aesthetic impact and approach to the divine that had been enacted in her marriage rites. As in those ceremonies, Nikandre’s and her two families’ social and religious status claims were reified, but only if the epigram was read.

17Reading framed viewing as such an occasion by shaping with verbal cues otherwise unfocused visual responses. The epigram records the names and the original rite, literally a dedication, but perhaps shorthand for a complex of rituals. Beyond that, reading made present those rites’ twin effects, the two alliances they generated: Nikandre’s with Artemis, and that joining her two families. Reading the epigram accomplished in words what a viewer’s response to the statue did: Nikandre’s past rites were re-performed.

42 See Clark, “Gendering”, Stehle, Performance, p. 30–39, 73–88.

43 Possibly she laid down her priestly office upon marriage; see Hurwit, Art and Culture, p. 186, Kro (...)

44Portrait, p. 125-127.

45Cf. Kron, “Priesthoods”, p. 147.

18Performers of Alkman’s Partheneion were not engaged in private rites: they served as religious agents of the Spartan polis, undertaking public ceremonial duties integral to their presentation as nubile virgins.42 Was Nikandre presented as such a ritual agent? Some scholars argue that she was a priestess, in which case her dedication provides a precedent for Lusistratê’s gift and especially her successors’ portraits. For these scholars often take the statue as an image of Nikandre, perhaps as priestess of Artemis and bride.43Iconography and epigram may have marked Nikandre as priestess. Connelly speculates that the statue held “signifiers of priesthood”, such as “a silver or gold phiale and jug”.44 If the statue represents Nikandre but assimilates her to Artemis, one might suggest that it captures her role as the goddess’ priestess.45 As to the inscription, Connelly considers the status claims and family list comparable to those in later epigrams such as Timô’s (see above) and Theanô’s (below).

19Nikandre’s statue more likely represents Artemis, but adorant was assimilated to divinity in encounters framed by readings of the epigram. This assimilation, the status claims, the statue’s monumentality, material and artistry and the sanctuary’s prestige all suggest a public importance in Nikandre’s ritual activity. Perhaps, if not full priesthood, festive performance as in a partheneion or the Delian maidens’ chorus of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo is alluded to. It was in people’s responses, however, not in explicit verbal or visual representation, that Nikandre’s public agency was perpetuated.

20I end with kore dedications from the Athenian Acropolis. Some scholars take them as divine recipients of offerings, mostly Athena; for others, they are portraits of young women; still others see them as generic idealizations of such women.46 I view korai as, generally, mortals, though assimilation of worshipper to goddess no doubt occurred. My reconstruction of reception applies equally to portraits and generics.

21Korai are elaborately costumed as participants in religious rites. They resemble their sisters in Geneleôs’ group, but with arms outstretched in offering, they may be iconographic abbreviations of scenes such as those on the Pitsá plaque.47 If korai represent ritual agents, perhaps specifically Panathenaic ones, the tradition of dedicating them may be recalled in later Acropolis sculpture. The young women on the east frieze of the Parthenon, finely costumed and carrying ritual equipment, probably depict participants in the Panathenaic procession; and the two in the central panel carry something on their heads, as did arrhêphoroi in their rite and kanêphoroi in the procession.48 Much later, families dedicated portrait statues of daughters who served as arrhêphoroi, for example, Theanô (IG II2 3634, Athenian Acropolis, II CE):49

Ἐρρηφόρον πατήρ με, πότνα, σ[οί, θεά],

Σαραπίων μήτηρ τ’ ἔθηκ[ε Χ]ρη[σίμη]

τὴν σὴν Θεανὼ πέντε καὶ [συναίμονες]·

δὸς δ’ οἷς μὲν ἥβην, οἷς [δὲ γηράσκειν καλῶς].

For you, mistress [goddess], my father Sarapiôn and mother [Ch]rê[simê] and five [siblings] dedicated me (as an) arrhêphoros, your Theanô. May you grant to the latter youth and to the former [to grow old beautifully].

50 Keesling, Votive Statues, p. 99.

51 Not illustrated are a capital (Athens, AM 9986) that fits atop the pillar (AM 6503), a plinth with (...)

22Some korai may represent arrhêphoroi or kanêphoroi, though I eschew any blanket identification of them all. Still, that they do portray young women as ritual agents is confirmed by epigrams – not, however, in the literal way of the Pitsá and Samos prose inscriptions and later epigrams. Known dedicators are all male, no Acropolis kore has a name label, and the later formula “X dedicated Y”, where Y is a female name, does not appear on kore supports.50 Rather, epigrams framed viewings as enactments of rituals like those in which young women participated, perhaps especially rites associated with the Panathenaia. Lusôn’s dedication provides an example. The retrograde epigram consists in a dedicatory distich followed by a hexameter signature (pillar support for kore, CEG 205 = IG I3 647, Athenian Acropolis, ca. 510-500, Figure 451):

Παλάδι Ἀθαναίαι Λύσον ἀνέθεκεν ἀπαρχὲν |

hõν αὐτõ κτ[εά]νον, τε̂ι δὲ θεõι χαρίεν. |

Θεβάδες ἐπ[οίεσεν hο Κ]ύ̣[ρ]νο παῖς τόδ᾿ ἄγαλμα.

For Pallas Athena Lusôn dedicated a first fruits offering out of his own possessions (κτέανα), (to be) a charis-filled (adjective χαρίεις) thing for the goddess. Thêbadês the son of Kurnos made this agalma.

23First, Athena’s epithet, Pallas, which called to poetically aware minds the goddess in arms. Homeric Hymn 28 starts its account of her armed birth thusly (line 1, Allen): Παλλάδ᾿ Ἀθηναίην κυδρὴν θεὸν ἄρχομ᾿ ἀείδειν, “Of Pallas Athena, glorious deity, I begin to sing”. On the Acropolis, the epithet also evoked Athena’s exploits in the Gigantomachy and thus marked her as mistress of the Panathenaia, typically figured as a Promachos.52

24Second, the emphasis on Lusôn’s expenditure of treasured possessions. This variation on the kosmos motif constitutes a claim to have decorated the city’s sacred space generously, as in Lusistratê’s epigram.

53Ibid., p. 246-254.

25Third, calling the dedication χαρίεν, “charis-filled” or “causing-charis”, which enhances the kosmos theme. Additionally, charis-words and χαίρω commonly appear in hymns, especially in prologues and (often as χαῖρε) epilogues. These words frame song as a performed dedication, through which pleasure-inducing beauty joins god and worshipper.53

26Fourth, the sculptor’s signature, another variation on the kosmos theme, comparable to poets’ or performers’ self-references. Often signatures are highlighted,54 here by colour: the dedicatory couplet’s letters are painted red, the signature’s blue.

55 See Day, Archaic Greek Epigram, p. 107-120.

56 Osborne, “Looking on”, p. 90-91.

27Fifth, ἄγαλμα, a thing that causes delight, especially with visually striking qualities. Agalma, as charis, appears in framing passages in poems presenting themselves as sung dedications, for example, Pindar’s Nemean 8.13-16, where performance is figured as a musical victory fillet offered to Aiakos.55 Osborne suggests agalma was especially apt for kore dedications: it points to the role of korai, real and sculpted, as treasures that enhance family prestige through ritual exchange.56

28The inscription narrates Lusôn’s act of dedication, but for readers familiar with religious poetry, it framed their direct encounter with “this” object as a new rite, an occasion of the kind at which a song calling itself agalma or charis-filled was performed, an event that affirmed its sponsor’s good taste and public-spiritedness in decorating the Acropolis with a valuable gift to the Panathenaic goddess.

29If korai are anonymous portraits, they probably represent the daughters of male dedicators as participants in the Panathenaia or other rites.57 If generic, they are stone surrogates for such participants.58 In either case, a kore presented the dedicator as head of a family rich in prestige-generating resources of the sort that included marriageable daughters – all of them agalmata in Osborne’s view, the value of which was realized in ritual exchanges between families or with gods. Viewers’ responses to korai made such ritual efficacy come alive in heightened experiences. The frame provided by an epigram like Lusôn’s would thus be successful: charis was felt, the dedication functioned as an agalma, a miniature Panathenaia was performed.

30Insofar as viewers were impressed by the resources spent on beautifying the sanctuary, they accepted the family’s place among Athenians who practised such display. Viewers’ pleasure in the brilliant costumes, charming hair-styles and youthful bodies of korai would also dispose them favourably to social claims in the dedications, just as the social roles claimed for maidens performing one of Alkman’s songs would seem attractive and natural to delighted audiences.59And as those performers were assimilated to their goddess, sculpted korai were nearly indistinguishable from divine images: a family’s claim on proximity to the sacred was made and reified in heightened encounters with a stone maiden.

31If “Pallas” in Lusôn’s epigram framed encounters as Panathenaic, the frame could succeed, especially for viewers who saw in the kore a female participant in the festival, generic or real. Something of the festival’s feeling would be generated in their responses: pleasure in the performer’s body and attire, affirmation of the family’s place in society and closeness to deity. If the image is generic, the kore functioned as a surrogate, perpetually enacting Lusôn’s sharing of his family’s agalmata in the manner of the festival. If his daughter – represented, but unnamed – participated in the Panathenaia, encounters with the dedication generated re-performances of her agency.

60 I thank L. Foschia and E. Santin for organizing the excellent conference, and ENS-Lyon for its gen (...)

32Such was the power of dedications and epigrams to represent female religious agency, explicitly or implicitly, literally or symbolically, and to generate its re-performance.60

14 Agora I 5802 (Miles, Eleusinion, p. 66, 188, no. I 3); Kaltsas and Shapiro, Worshiping Women, p. 200-201, no. 81 (V. Orphanou-Floraki). A second-century decree of the deme Melitê records the honouring of a priestess of the Thesmophoria named Satura with myrtle crowns and what is noted as the standard right to dedicate a painted portrait plaque in the Eleusinion; see Agora I 5165 (Miles, Eleusinion, p. 198, no. I 35).

15 See, similarly but without emphasis on reception, Connelly, Portrait, p. 119, 163. For concerns about my concept of re-performance, see reviews of Day, Archaic Greek Epigram by Furley and Tueller.

51 Not illustrated are a capital (Athens, AM 9986) that fits atop the pillar (AM 6503), a plinth with kore’s feet (AM 464) that fits into the cutting in the capital and a kore (AM 612 + 304) associated with this monument by Raubitschek (DAA, no. 290).

60 I thank L. Foschia and E. Santin for organizing the excellent conference, and ENS-Lyon for its generous hosting of the event. I also thank E. Babnik, K. Christophi, C. Crowther, H. R. Goette, and R. Proskynitopoulou for help in obtaining photographs.